מזל טוב

queen city of the west

When Deb­bie and I decid­ed to con­tin­ue our rab­binic stud­ies at the Cincin­nati, Ohio cam­pus of HUC-JIR rather than at the New York cam­pus, a num­ber of our friends made fun of us. They joked that we’d spend all our time in rock­ing chairs on the porch of our apart­ment. We actu­al­ly had a num­ber of pos­i­tive rea­sons for want­i­ng to study in Cincin­nati (as well as a vari­ety of neg­a­tive rea­sons for not study­ing in NYC).

Deb­bie could work in the muse­um on the cam­pus in Cincin­nati as she had in Los Ange­les.

Mark could work in the Klau Library (one of the pre­mier Juda­ic libraries) and even, per­haps the rare book room.

Being coastal, big-city kids, this would be a chance to expe­ri­ence the mid­dle of the coun­try, it was more like­ly that the two of us would find jobs in a big city on one of the coasts after ordi­na­tion, than in “fly­over” coun­try.

The slow­er pace of Cincin­nati would enable us to focus on our stud­ies… the actu­al pur­pose of our being in school.

…and this was the mir­ror image of why NYC was not such a great idea for us, in New York, we would be busy try­ing to earn enough mon­ey to afford to live in NYC and then not have either the time or the mon­ey to take advan­tage of all the dis­trac­tions from our stud­ies that NYC has to offer.

Cincin­nati was an excel­lent choice. We did explore The Mid­west, as well as The South. We met love­ly peo­ple and we even went to a base­ball game.

on to the big apple

On ordi­na­tion, R. Shel­don Zim­mer­man and his laypeo­ple offered Deb­bie a posi­tion as assis­tant rab­bi at Cen­tral Syn­a­gogue in New York City. We moved to NYC and found an apart­ment with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the syn­a­gogue (on 64th near 1st). I pur­sued a num­ber of my old Fed­er­a­tion con­tacts and was able to get a job in the Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Divi­sion of the UJA-Fed­er­a­tion Cam­paign.

mark’s busi­ness card

My pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty at the Cam­paign was in “com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing” or “out­reach” to work with com­mit­tees of young donors (25–35ish Jew­ish “Yup­pies”) to cre­ate activ­i­ties around New York City that would attract many oth­ers of their peers. These events should have some Juda­ic con­tent, as well as a large social com­po­nent. The peo­ple we attract­ed and involved would ulti­mate­ly be invit­ed to fund-rais­ing events and hope­ful­ly become active in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.

One of the vol­un­teers was a love­ly young woman who met and mar­ried a bright and engag­ing young rab­bi who had been a participant/speaker for one of our pro­grams. Hav­ing grown up in an Ortho­dox envi­ron­ment he was accus­tomed to say­ing Mazal Tov to every­one at a sim­cha. They pro­duced a but­ton that they dis­trib­uted at their wed­ding which served as a way to extend that greet­ing.

מזל טוב but­ton from a wed­ding

Sad­ly (as some­times hap­pens) the back­ing has sep­a­rat­ed from the front and I can not wear it.

The cou­ple (though now divorced) has two grown chil­dren.

The rab­bi con­tin­ues to dis­trib­ute the but­tons occa­sion­al­ly (now in its third edi­tion) at Brit Milah cer­e­monies, Bar Mitz­vah cel­e­bra­tions and oth­er joy­ous occa­sions.

and back

Many years have passed since then. That wed­ding was in 1981. I have not learned about any oth­er cou­ples who have pro­duced but­tons to share at their wed­dings. But, this week­end Noam and Rachel are get­ting mar­ried. The two of them have been liv­ing in New York (Brook­lyn) with Avi­gail. Rachel’s par­ents live in Cincin­nati where Rachel grew up. The joy­ous wed­ding will occur at a love­ly spot along the Lit­tle Mia­mi Riv­er. In joy­ous antic­i­pa­tion, I have been wear­ing a but­ton I pur­chased on eBay in April of 2009 from some­one liv­ing in Lake­land, Flori­da. I do not know why it was made or for whom.

מזל טוב

Date:

?

Size:

3.8

Pin Form:

clasp

Print Method:

cel­lu­loid

Text

מזל טוב

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear, or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

I began creating a Web site in my head as early as August 1995 when I drafted the following

For a project I’m pursuing regarding Jewish involvement on the internet and the World Wide Web in particular, I’m interested in learning about any sites about which you may know. For example, do any rabbis have Home pages? Which synagogues or synagogue organizations have Web sites? Does Marge Piercy have a site at which you can read portions of "He She and It"? Does Howard Rheingold have a site where you can learn more about creating a Virtual [Jewish] Community? Is there a Web Camera at the Kotel? In the Wilderness of Zin?

¡warning!

This site remains under considerable reconstruction.

Most pages should still be available in their original location. However, I will be moving the vast majority of the old site (static html pages) into the Web 2.0 (blog) site. If you experience any "link rot", please let me know.

When I initially created this site I organized the material into what seemed to be meaningful categories (in the days before "tags"). But the time came when, it was hard to figure out which link to click if you wanted to know about Sammy Levinger's ("who"?) death ("what"?) while fighting during the Spanish Civil War ("when"?), though we had visited Belchite the site ("where?") of the battle where he sustained his mortal wounds. The new tools should make this process easier.

`//rite on!
,\\ark Hurvitz

Producing content on the Web since 1995.

some sayings of ר‘משבצונה“ל

For many years I have worked hard, and struggled with mastering virtuous. Now, in addition, I’m working on becoming more virtual.This is an expression of that effort.
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All photographs are by Mark Hurvitz unless they are obviously not (or credit otherwise is given).

The photos in the banner at the top (only a shallow sliver of a much larger photo) are either from our home or our travels and are offered for their beauty alone (though a brain-teaser for me: "Where was that?").